I would have to write a book to tell you why this story is so infuriating to me. I don’t have time for books! But, I have followed the Burma (Myanmar) Rohingya Muslim issue for years (174 previous posts in our Rohingya category) and it makes me want to explode when I see the one-sided portrayal of the issue by the mainstream (leftwing, pro-Islamist media).
By the way, my initial interest in the Rohingya story was that our refugee resettlement contractors are pushing for the US to take more Rohingya refugees (USCCB here), and in fact have already resettled some in America. Esar Met, convicted of killing a Burmese Christian girl earlier this year in Utah, was almost certainly a Rohingya.
Oh, how times have changed. Here is Time magazine on the Rohingya in 2002 (see our 2009 post here to see how Time got with the Rohingya as ‘victims’ meme by 2009). In 2002:
Today, southern Bangladesh has become a haven for hundreds of jihadis on the lam. They find natural allies in Muslim guerrillas from India hiding out across the border, and in Muslim Rohingyas.
Interestingly, the US State Department removed its link where Rohingya had been previously linked to Islamic terror groups.
I don’t see one single word in the New York Times article from last Thursday about what started the latest round of violence between the Buddhist majority and the Muslim Rohingya minority—the rape and murder in 2012 of a Burmese girl by a gang of Muslim men. Not a word about outside Islamic agitators (Muslim “pilgrams”) working among the Rohingya population, and definitely not one word about the Organization of Islamic Cooperation attempting to get an Islamic/sharia foothold in Burma.
Remember everywhere is fair game for the creation of a Sharia state.
Here is the New York Times carrying water for the lecturing Obama again and the Islamist agenda:
SITTWE, Myanmar — The Myanmar government has given the estimated one million Rohingya people in this coastal region of the country a dispiriting choice: Prove your family has lived here for more than 60 years and qualify for second-class citizenship, or be placed in camps and face deportation.
The policy, accompanied by a wave of decrees and legislation, has made life for the Rohingya, a long-persecuted Muslim minority, ever more desperate, spurring the biggest flow of Rohingya refugees since a major exodus two years ago.
In the last three weeks alone, 14,500 Rohingya have sailed from the beaches of Rakhine State to Thailand, with the ultimate goal of reaching Malaysia, according to the Arakan Project, a group that monitors Rohingya refugees.
The crisis has become an embarrassment to the White House ahead of a scheduled visit by President Obama to Myanmar next week. [Obama off to Asia here—ed] The administration considers Myanmar a foreign-policy success story in Asia but is worried that renewed conflict between Buddhist extremists, who are given a free hand by the government, and the Rohingya could derail the already rocky transition from military rule to democratic reform.
Mr. Obama called President Thein Sein of Myanmar last week, urging him to address the “tensions and humanitarian situation in Rakhine State,” the White House said.
In his most public appeal to the government yet, Mr. Obama asked the Myanmar leader to revise the anti-Rohingya policies, specifically the resettlement plan. Myanmar must “support the civil and political rights of the Rohingya population,” he said.
The Rohingya have faced discrimination for decades. They have been denied citizenship and evicted from their homes, their land has been confiscated, and they have been attacked by the military. After one such attack in 1978, some 200,000 fled to Bangladesh.
Many paragraphs of blah, blah, blah and this:
The latest flare-up began with an outbreak of sectarian rioting in 2012, in which hundreds of Rohingya were killed and dozens of their villages burned to the ground by radical Buddhists. Since then, close to 100,000 have fled the country, and more than 100,000 have been confined to squalid camps, forbidden to leave.
No discussion of how the latest flare-up started! Or, how the Rohingya set Buddhist villages on fire and killed innocents. Typical biased and disgusting coverage!
See our Rohingya Reports category. And, you could write a book!